Semua Bab Obsessed (Forbidden Desire): Bab 31 - Bab 39

The silence in the room was suffocating.Elena paced the length of the bedroom for what felt like the hundredth time, her bare feet silent against the marble floor. Three hours. She'd been alone for three hours since Rodrigo left, and the walls were closing in. The Tuscan sun had climbed higher, pouring golden light through the windows, but it did nothing to warm the ice in her veins.She stopped at the window, pressing her forehead against the glass. The countryside stretched endlessly, beautiful and impossible. Somewhere out there, beyond those hills, was freedom.Her chest tightened at the thought of him. Was he alive? Hurt? Looking for her?Did he even care?Elena shook her head, pushing away from the window. She couldn't think about Dante right now. Couldn't let herself fall apart wondering if he'd survived the ambush. She needed to focus. Needed to find a way out of this gilded prison before Rodrigo came back with more of his twisted logic and those eyes that makes her breathles

Elena couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. The words echoed in her head, impossible."You're lying.""I'm not." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a photograph. "This was taken three weeks ago."He handed it to her.Elena's hands shook as she looked at the image. A woman, maybe fifty, with dark hair. She was standing in front of a small café, smiling at something off-camera. Laugh lines around her eyes. A softness to her expression that Elena remembered from childhood.It was her mother.Older. Different. But unmistakably her."Oh my God," Elena whispered."She's alive. She's safe. And she's waiting.""Waiting for what?""For you." Rodrigo's thumb brushed away a tear Elena hadn't realized had fallen. "I can take you to her. Tomorrow. Today. Whenever you want. She's two hours from here."Elena's chest felt like it was cracking open. Her mother. Alive. Close. After years of searching, of wondering, of endless dead ends and broken hope."Why didn't you lead with this?" Her voi

By the fifth day Elena had stopped thinking about it. The hospital room, the warmth she thought she had held, the sound she thought she had heard, all of it had quietly stopped feeling like a memory and started feeling like something her exhausted brain had put together out of nothing. She had been running on no sleep and too much fear and her mind had filled in the gaps the way minds do when you push them too hard. That was what she told herself and it worked well enough that she stopped checking.Sofia was a different matter entirely.Sofia showed up at her door every morning without knocking. She would just stand there in the hallway with her rabbit under her arm, waiting, her curls going in six different directions, staring at Elena with those big serious eyes like she had every right to be there and was simply waiting for Elena to catch up."I already read you this one," Elena said on the third morning."I know," Sofia said.She said it like that settled it. Elena moved over, Sof

Rodrigo didn't even flinch when Elena collided directly with his chest, his hands simply sliding out of his tailored tuxedo pockets to catch her smoothly by the elbows to steady her, and before Elena could even try to stumble over an excuse or pull away from his firm grip the heavy mahogany door clicked open right behind her, revealing Dante stepping out into the quiet corridor.Rodrigo immediately pulled Elena flush against his side, wrapping his arm securely around her waist in a tight, possessive hold that left absolutely no room for her to pull away, and Elena held her breath, her chest tight with absolute panic as she braced herself, praying desperately that Dante wouldn't lose his temper and scream out exactly what they had just been doing in the dark.To her absolute surprise Dante didn't say a single word, his face completely blank and his posture rigidly still as Rodrigo guided her right past him, not even bothering to give Dante a second glance or a single word of greeting a

Elena barely slept. She lay in the dark replaying Sofia's words over and over until they stopped sounding like a child talking and started sounding like evidence, and when the sun finally came through the curtains she gave up on rest and went downstairs.Sofia was already in the kitchen sitting at the counter with a bowl of cereal, swinging her legs and chattering to one of the housekeepers about a butterfly she saw in the garden, and when she spotted Elena her whole face lit up and she waved her over with a spoon still in her hand."Can you sit with me?"Elena sat beside her and poured herself coffee and waited until the housekeeper left the room before she spoke. "Sofia, the lady you told me about last night, the one who used to read you stories, do you remember her name?"Sofia chewed her cereal and thought about it. "Camilla," she said after a second. "She had long brown hair and she smelled like flowers and she let me put stickers on her arm." She looked up at Elena. "Are you goi